So, my SO is about to buy a new place, and we’re trying to pick some fun colors and do a painting blitz right as she moves in (seems like the best time).
So we grabbed some color samples from Home Depot, where we discovered that Behr has an online program (behr.com) where you can select colors, see them on sample walls, etc.
Great! I would much rather do stuff on a computer anyway. The problem is, the colors on my laptop are way off - greens are skewed towards blue, and everything is WAY darker than it should be. I’m using a Dell Latitude something something from work (I can get the exact model if you need). Besides it looking basically dark, I can tell the color’s off only by comparing it to the samples in the store.
Is there any way I can “correct” the color of my monitor? Is this a basic limitation of laptop screens? Would I be significantly better off with a regular monitor, or does it depend on the monitor? How would I ever know if I got the color right (compare to paint samples?).
Thanks.
Assuming you’re using Windows, you may have some color balance controls available in your Display Properties control panel. What options and controls are available will depend on the maker of your video chipset and the drivers that are installed, so it’s unlikely anyone here can tell you specifically what to expect. (Maybe in the Dell Community Forums, though.) Assuming it’s Windows XP, try looking at Display Properties, clicking the Settings tab, then the Advanced button.
Photo/video/publishing pros who care about very accurate color usually use CRT displays with special color-calibration equipment, not LCDs. There may be a limit to how accurate your laptop color gets.
The brightness, conrast, and possibly the color balance, of the display on an LCD panel can also change a lot depending on the angle of view; try pushing the top of your screen further away from you, or pulling it closer to you - that could be all there is to your brightness problem.
And in any case, the computer isn’t going to be able to simulate the lighing of the actual environment. If you’re worried about color accuracy, there’s probably no substitute for perusing a selection of old-fashioned paint cards right there in the new space.
Play online games much, Lagged2Death?
I agree with you that this is only going to be an approximation, and we’ll do a reality check with actual samples when we get there. It’s just annoying how bad an approximation this is right now.
I’ll try again with an actual CRT, and tweak the color balance until it matches the paint swatches we have. That will at least get us closer.
I believe it’s called gamma correction.
However, there are two additional problems in that (1) laptops being LCDs render differently than video monitors, and more importantly, (2) viewing colors on a computer monitor is different than using a paint chip.
All in all, the online color swatches may be fine to narrow the choices, but looking at actual paint chips under the expected lighting is the only way to go.
There is another possible issue that hasn’t been mentioned: the temperature of the white point for your screen. If the white point temperature (not physical temperature) was too high, it would skew colors towards the blue end of the spectrum. Try turning it down a bit, see what that gives you. It’s usually measured in Kelvins (K), so if you don’t see anything explicitly labeled “white point” in your color controls, but you see numbers somewhere in the 4,000 to 10,000 range followed by a K, that’s probably them. Alternatively, your monitor controls might allow you to control the color gain for each primary, so if it lets you do that, try turning down the gain for blue.
For the screen being too dark, increasing the gamma will make the middle tones brighter, decreasing the contrast will make the dark tones brighter, and increasing the brightness will make the light tones brighter.
But there is a larger issue, and that is that the colors displayable on a monitor – any monitor, or TV for that matter – are only a subset of colors that people can see. No matter what color the LEDs on your screen are, there will be certain paint colors that it can’t display properly. As Duckster noted, use the online version only for winnowing out bad colors, not for the final decision.
It’s all but impossible to alter the white point on an LCD as it’s the color of the fluorescent or electroluminescent backlight. Adjustable LCDs tend to be expensive.
With CRTs, it is simple to change the white point, merely be altering the relative strength of the red, green and blue signals, or more commonly, by selecting the desired “temperature” via the monitor’s front panel settings.
Try using the sRGB color profile. I’m using sRGB on my LCD monitor at home, and printed colors (inkjet) come amazingly close to the on-screen color, regardless of what the panel’s white point is.
In all the years I’ve used this silly handle, no one has ever guessed the significance - until now. 
Good luck with your color problem!
Lagged2Death, my college GPA would have been a full point higher if Quake II had never been invented. Laggy servers suck!
I’m always amazed at the knowledge on this board. Thanks for all the replies!